Free A Ghost at the Door by Michael Dobbs Page B

too often in my experience the past comes back to haunt you. So you
and Harry look forward to your future. Don’t waste too much time raking over bad times that have long since been buried. Be happy. And be careful.’

    Harry tossed around his bed like a ferret in a sack, wrapping his sheet into impossible knots. Something was chasing him through the shallows of the night, screaming at him so
loud he could barely hear, let alone sleep. It wasn’t simply that Susannah Ranelagh was lying, nor that his presence alone had been enough to make her swoon with fright. There was something
else, something nagging at him with ferocious persistence, something about her, or about her house, he couldn’t be sure which, yet it was setting him on edge like the sound of a
dentist’s drill. His intelligence training in Northern Ireland had taught him how to observe, to soak up images and information even when there wasn’t time to analyse it all, to make
sense of it later. He had half seen something and he pursued it until sweat was running down his back.
    Then he knew. Hit him so hard that he sat up in bed as though a grenade had been thrown through the window. In her house of many memories the old girl had many photos. Relatives, perhaps, or
close friends, those who had clearly left a mark in her life. It was one of those photos that had been screaming at Harry, in a silver frame among the crowd that filled the top of the bookcase. Of
a young Susannah Ranelagh, before her hair had lost its life and her features had been stretched by disappointment, at a time in her life when her smile suggested not simply the pleasures of the
moment but also the expectation of more ahead. She was at a dinner table at which sat six others, four men and two other young women, in formal evening wear. A student ball, Harry guessed.
Black-and-white, a little grainy. And perhaps it was the utter impossibility of what he now saw that had delayed his understanding and fought so hard with his wits, because one of the men at the
table was Harry himself. No, not Harry, that was absurd: it was years before he’d been born. But, if not Harry, then someone who looked so like him that it left Harry gasping in
amazement.
    His father. It was Johnnie.
    Harry didn’t wait for the smell of coffee or the clattering of breakfast bowls. He dragged himself down the hotel stairs three at a time, lashing out at doors and charging past the
astonished receptionist. Soon he was gunning his bike past the upmarket haunts of Pitts Bay Road and way past the local speed limit. A few early-morning walkers shook their heads in disgust. Harry
bent low over the handlebars to squeeze out the last breath of speed. It was only minutes before he was on the coast road, heading east, the sun playing games with him, bouncing off the water and
into his eyes as he took the gentle curves and low rises of the North Shore Road. He held his head down, the sea wind whipping tears from his eyes. It was as he came to the junction that led to the
Sound, barely a few hundred yards from Susannah Ranelagh’s house, that he was forced to pause as other traffic crossed his path. He raised his eyes, looked both ways, then ahead. That was
when he caught a sight that made him scream loud with frustration and fear. Up ahead he could see a spiral of evil, insistent smoke punching through the clear morning air.
    By the time Harry’s moped had slithered to a halt, the tyres sliding out on the sand-strewn tarmac, dumping the bike to the ground, the front of the house was already disappearing behind a
curtain of smoke and fire. The front door was a sheet of flame, the porch beginning to scatter droplets of burning confetti that were scorching the grass. The lower windows were gone and already
smoke was gathering behind the windows on the first floor and seeping out through the eaves. A group of neighbours had gathered across the street, powerless, pathetic; Kenny was there, too, his
football held